Twitter’s Role in Digital Democracy, Post-Truth, and Political Polarization

Yeğen, Ceren; Ayhan, Bünyamin; Demir, Yavuz

doi:10.21018/rjcpr.2022.2.343

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…The fact that politicians and political groups from many political philosophies use X appears to exacerbate divisiveness, which was shown by Yegen et al [8].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 95%

Polarizing Topics on Twitter in the 2022 United States Elections

Katalinić,

Dunđer,

Seljan

2023

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Politically polarizing issues are a growing concern around the world, creating divisions along ideological lines, which was also confirmed during the 2022 United States midterm elections. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the results of the 2022 U.S. midterm elections and the topics that were covered during the campaign. A dataset consisting of 52,688 tweets in total was created by collecting tweets of senators, representatives and governors who participated in the elections one month before the start of the elections. Using unsupervised machine learning, topic modeling is built on the collected data and visualized to represent topics. Furthermore, supervised machine learning is used to classify tweets to the corresponding political party, whereas sentiment analysis is carried out in order to detect polarity and subjectivity. Tweets from participating politicians, U.S. states and involved parties were found to correlate with polarizing topics. This study hereby explored the relationship between the topics that were creating a divide between Democrats and Republicans during their campaign and the 2022 U.S. midterm election outcomes. This research found that polarizing topics permeated the Twitter (today known as X) campaign, and that all elections were classified as highly subjective. In the Senate and House elections, this classification analysis showed significant misclassification rates of 21.37% and 24.15%, respectively, indicating that Republican tweets often aligned with traditional Democratic narratives.

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“…The fact that politicians and political groups from many political philosophies use X appears to exacerbate divisiveness, which was shown by Yegen et al [8].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 95%

Polarizing Topics on Twitter in the 2022 United States Elections

Katalinić,

Dunđer,

Seljan

2023

Information

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“…Post-truth politics is also a politics of emotion rather than rational political debate (Sher, 2021;Pop, 2020). Not to mention, this lack of rational debate can become destructive for a society and create anti-intellectual sentiments in the public (Yegen et al, 2022;De Freitas Ahuja, 2022).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Post-Truth Politics: An Analysis of News Channel’s Coverage of Political Leaders’ Speeches in Public Processions in Pakistan

Haider,

Soomro,

Aamir

et al. 2024

jsom

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This study attempts to find out the symptoms of post-truth political culture — politics of emotions rather than rational political debate — in the context of Pakistan. The data in the form of political speeches of politicians from March to July 2022 was taken from Youtube. Political speeches of leaders of four main political parties of Pakistan were analyzed: Imran Khan from Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Maryam Nawaz from Pakistan Muslim league (PML-N), Bilawal Bhutto Zardari from Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), and Maulana Fazal Ur Rehman from Jamiat-Ulema-Islami (JUI-F). Using the quantitative content analysis method, the content of 26 speeches, consisting of almost 854 minutes, was broken down into nine categories: policy, facts, false statements, religion, party, promises, performance, public issues, and opposition. Agenda setting theory laid the theoretical approach to observe post-truth dilemmas in political speeches in the public processions. The observed categories were compared across all politicians descriptively: the speeches had 2% facts; 4% false statements; 5% discussion on policy making; 41% arguments attacking the opponent political party; 12% religious references; 12% promises; 10% arguments were about the leader’s own political party; 5% were based on their past performance; whilst, only 9% addressed the public issues.

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“…61-62). In addition to the distinctive features of the medium, factors such as the characteristics and motivations of the users, their proximity to the events geographically, and the appeal of the topics all play a role in the significance and influence of bloggers and Twitter users in the process of gaining attention (Segev et al, 2012, p. 3;Xu et al, 2010Xu et al, , p. 1278Yegen, et al, 2022). Nowadays, where social media networks have become an integral part of daily life, the agenda is determined through these networks.…”

Section: Digital Opinion Leadersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Transformation of Opinion Leaders from a Traditional to a Digital Mindset

Balcı¹,

Tiryaki²,

Karakuş³

2022

IJOL

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The advancements in the field of communication concurrently transpire throughout the evolution of the Internet and its accompanying tools. A free communication opportunity over the internet platform has resulted in the involvement of a sizable people mass in this digital environment. Individuals also pose variations in communication styles since Web 2.0 technology promotes interpersonal connection and communication. Such variations have resulted in modification and deformation in the Two-Stage Flow Theory, which is among the traditional communication models. According to the conventional definition, opinion leaders have the force to potentially influence society with their respective approaches and responses to various events and cases. They have revived alongside the changing media contexts. The transition in these platforms proceeds beyond the change in technology since they facilitate a significant portion of social change. Nowadays, opinion leaders appeal to eventuate social change since they have the potential to convey to a sizable mass of internet users. The vast majority of internet users are influenced by the attitudes and accessions of new opinion leaders while making decisions on their social life, political issues, products, and personal investments. On the one hand, people, groups, companies, and political structures that are aware of the indulgent aspects of the opinion leaders try to persuade them; on the other hand, these entities seek to generate their opinion leaders and forge a follower mass for them. The purpose of the study was to assess the concept of an opinion leader introduced by the Two-Stage Flow Theory and the new context in which it has emerged in light of the elaboration of modern communication technology. The study findings revealed that the Internet and its accompanying tools differed the recent opinion leaders from traditional ones; however, the most critical pillar of this differentiation was digital domains where opinion leaders appeal to large masses composed of different layers.

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Twitter’s Role in Digital Democracy, Post-Truth, and Political Polarization

Cited by 11 publications

References 32 publications

Polarizing Topics on Twitter in the 2022 United States Elections

Polarizing Topics on Twitter in the 2022 United States Elections

Post-Truth Politics: An Analysis of News Channel’s Coverage of Political Leaders’ Speeches in Public Processions in Pakistan

Exploring the Transformation of Opinion Leaders from a Traditional to a Digital Mindset

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